Rummaging for Answers
by backinthebox
Summary: The story goes like this: She thinks she loves the other girl, but there is always something going on, too many forces and circumstances that need addressing before declarations of love and affection, because she has never believed that such declarations should be done in haste. Then a stone of alien origin activates and swallows her whole.


I have "Jemma no!" feelings from the end of Season 2. And Skimmons. And maybe some Mockingnerd.

What-ifs are so much fun, yes?

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The story goes like this: girl meets boy. Girl and boy work well together inside a laboratory, their combined abilities in Engineering and Biochemistry make them a formidable duo throughout their time in the Academy and they are cleared to join a field team as its two-person science division.

The story goes like this: girl meets girl. One girl is socially inept and more comfortable around Petri dishes and lab experiments than other people. The other girl has lived on her own for so long being around other people who want to have her around is a miracle in and of itself.

The boy believes he is in love with the girl. The girl loves him also, because he is the closest person she has in the world, but she has never considered him romantically.

She thinks she loves the other girl, but there is always something going on, too many forces and circumstances that need addressing before declarations of love and affection, because she has never believed that such declarations should be done in haste.

Before she could tell either of them any of these things, a stone of alien origin activates and swallows her whole.

The story goes like this.

Bobbi had taken it upon herself to look after Jemma, even though Bobbi's as shaken and vulnerable as any agent could get. She had just been cleared off bed rest, but not yet for active duty, and when it was decided that Jemma had to be confined to isolation until the effects of the Monolith were made evident, Bobbi decided it would be nice to be useful. And she'd missed Jemma, even though since Jemma had rendered her unconscious during the Playground siege, Jemma had been remarkably ambivalent towards her and Mack.

Not that Bobbi could blame her, really.

But even then, Jemma had been herself: shy and awkward, but get her talking about her work and she could talk a mile a minute. And whether it was because they both had backgrounds in biochemistry, Bobbi liked conversing with Jemma about her work.

The Jemma Simmons that came out of the Monolith was not that girl. She was taciturn and sullen, and refused to speak to Fitz or Skye, or even Coulson. She was openly scathing of Mack, wary of Hunter, and the only person she seemed willing to talk to was May.

Bobbi was only an acceptable option because Bobbi brought with her lab reports to analyze and work on.

And Bobbi gets it: Simmons had been through an ordeal, whatever it may have been like inside the Monolith, and the only way to feel like she was in control again was to focus on something she could handle.

The story goes like this: SHIELD had an index, of gifted and enhanced individuals, and before Jemma encountered the Monolith, she had been on the place heading to Afterlife hoping to categorize its residents into the Index. That meant taking blood samples, listing their abilities, and encoding her findings.

The death of Agent Gonzales had prevented her from doing that job.

But whatever it was Coulson and Skye were doing, they had managed to gather names and blood cultures from other gifted individuals.

Their previous experience with the index called them Inhumans. But Skye counted among them, and Jemma couldn't well call her friend inhuman.

 _Friend_. And she had to be, at least for now, as internally, Jemma warred with herself between wanting to finally admit her feelings to Skye, and still feeling the betrayal after Skye had gained her powers.

Because she could, at the very least, admit some basic facts, if only to herself: she loved Skye. She wasn't entirely sure she could trust Daisy Johnson.

She wondered if this was how Hunter felt about Bobbi Morse and (Bobbi's operative call sign) Mockingbird.

They were one and the same, yet varied situations called for one more than the other.

It shouldn't matter, but it does.

The story goes like this: after weeks of observation and nothing happens, Bobbi and Jemma find themselves alone in the laboratory. They are the only two people Coulson trusts to handle encoding for the Index, and they are only really comfortable with each other.

Unlike last time, Fitz understands that the distance between him and Jemma is necessary, and whatever it could have been she had been about to tell him _before_ , it had not been a declaration of her own romantic affections for him.

They are interrupted by Skye — _Daisy_ , her own way of claiming the part of her that had met her parents, and honoring them by claiming the name they had given her — who was bringing with her new specimen samples from her most recent road trip with Coulson.

"Oh. Hey, Jem. Finally out of solitary, huh?" She joked, smiling at the other girl.

Jemma smiled back wanly. "Hello, Sk– Daisy. Yes, Bobbi finally declared me noncontagious."

"Better safe than sorry, right?" Daisy said wryly. "And it's OK if you call me Skye. I mean, it'll be like calling you, I don't know, Jean, after years of Hermione. Not that you're Hermione Granger. I know you're not. I mean, what?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Bobbi roll hers and wondered if Jemma could tell she was blushing. Probably not. Score one for natural darker skin!

"Are you fist-pumping?" Bobbi asked.

"What? No." Daisy denied, although Jemma's look of amusement told her that denial was futile.

"Are these new members of your top-secret Caterpillars project with Coulson?" Jemma queried, glancing at the samples Skye had handed Bobbi. She turned back to Daisy quickly. "Which we know nothing about!"

"Have you been hacking again?" Daisy asked suspiciously. She glanced at Bobbi, who held up her hands as if to plead her innocence.

"Bobbi is on the Avengers shortlist!" Jemma blurted out.

Bobbi groaned. "How do you even know these things, Simmons?"

Daisy blinked, and pointed at Bobbi. "One, that's awesome. Since AC can't reconcile with his dreamboat Captain America, that means you're my one degree away from Thor and Tony Stark." She turned back to Jemma. "Two, we should hang out one of these days and you can tell me all about what you've been finding in our systems."

"You know May has an in with Romanoff, right?" Bobbi asked, hoping that she really wouldn't be counted on to introduce these kids to any of the Avengers. Maria would kill her.

Daisy paused, and looked at her again. "Now I do. But May's scary, and if she was pissed when we all learned about Andrew, I don't want to be you when she finds out you spilled about her and Romanoff."

"Worth it." Bobbi shrugged. Better May than Maria, honestly, because at least May would make it quick.

Daisy turned back to Jemma. "I want to stick around and hang out, especially if we get rid of the 'Bird, but I'm exhausted. Harry Potter on Saturday?"

Jemma nodded. "I'll get Hunter to buy us popcorn."

"Cool." Daisy grinned. "It's a date."

The story goes like this: Bobbi prepares the slides, her fine motor functions still somewhat unpredictable, and Jemma adjusts the microscope for them to examine the samples on their monitors.

The first slide they examine raises red flags because the cells are gray and shrunken.

The second slide of same sample shows the same.

The third slide, of a different individual, also shows dead cells.

They can't help it: they call in May.

Melinda May looked at the two panicked biochemists, with at least three doctorate degrees between them, and followed their instructions on how to prepare a specimen slide.

The sample is red and healthy on the microscope.

It's not Bobbi, because the sample remains red after she touches the slide to check if she'd just messed up the three previous slides.

Jemma doesn't even need to touch the slide to know what's happening. "The stone."

The story goes like this: the origins of the residents of Afterlife have the same origins as the Monolith that had captured Jemma. Raina had warned Jiaying, and had reached Skye, that the Monolith endangered Inhumans. It would exterminate them, supposedly, but there was nothing to indicate _how_.

And now its powers had a vessel.

Bobbi is helpless, watching Jemma sob into May's shoulder, because apparently this isn't the first time an alien virus had targeted Jemma. Bobbi had read Jemma's file, but she hadn't known the trauma involved from when she had contacted a Chitauri virus. She only understood that Jemma had been willing to sacrifice her life to save her team's.

The Chitauri virus had almost ended Jemma Simmons' life.

Now the Monolith had given Jemma Simmons the ability to end Skye's.

The story goes like this.

Bobbi and May spend countless hours with Jemma, training her for combat, because the irony is that while her brain and scientific curiosity will help them learn more about the gifted individuals in the Index, the part of her that the Monolith had claimed is what will help them win what could easily become a war.

Trying to work out the extent of Jemma's abilities and the workarounds for it are how she and Fitz recover their friendship, because when it comes down to it, there is nobody Jemma trusts more to help her through the ordeal than Leo Fitz. He helps her figure out how to magnify the effect of her powers, and helps her figure out how to continue her work as a biochemist that has to work on the Index without killing all her specimen samples. And one day, out of the blue, he notes that she really should tell Skye how she feels, instead of dancing around it. She doesn't deny it — she can't — and she realizes that Fitz had known, probably sooner than she had, that she had feelings for Skye. One day, when he excitedly and earnestly (hopefully jokingly) speculates that maybe she's part alien — which is why she's so susceptible to alien viruses and why earth-based biochemistry fascinates her — she realizes just how much she truly loves him.

She and Mack will never be best friends, but she finds him oddly understanding on the days that she feels overwhelmed by how alien DNA has incorporated itself into her body, and he sympathizes when she admits to feeling helplessness at the fact.

And the girl?

The only way Jemma can touch Skye is with specially-designed gloves. The irony is not lost on either of them. Nor is the ironic twist that it's when they discover that physical signs of affection has stopped being an option for them that Daisy and Jemma come clean on their feelings for each other.

There's always the temptation, of course, to throw caution to the wind and just _risk it_ , but the split-second thrill is nowhere near worth the possibility of losing Skye.

If she were a student of literature, she would appreciate the beautifully tragic romance of it, but the fact was, she got to live each day right beside Skye, learning to love Daisy, and maybe they can't touch, or kiss, or all the other romantic gestures that everyone is taught to be signs of affection, but Jemma doesn't touch Skye so she can continue to live. And for the girl who selflessly throws herself out of airplanes, uses herself as a body to shield against a grenade, and joins HYDRA to help her friends, well… the sacrifice of touch to ensure that Skye stayed alive is probably the most selfish thing Jemma's done in her time in SHIELD.

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A/N: Yes, I am borrowing from The Uncanny X-Men's Rogue and Gambit, as well as Pushing Daisies, as no-touching-allowed role models for Jemma and Skye. Because why not.


End file.
